The new year has seen another multi-country roaming agreement come into effect as residents of Andean Community countries see roaming charges abolished.
Roaming charges for mobile communications became a thing of the past for the countries of the Andean Community – the CAN countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru – on 1 January this year.
As MercoPress reports, this means that Decision 854, a supranational and mandatory regulation that was approved on 19 February 2020, will allow the same conditions or rate plans to be applied as those of the end user's country of origin throughout the region for voice, SMS and data services.
This improvement has been a long time coming but it should benefit more than 111 million users regionally and, its promoters hope, contribute to closing the digital divide. It should also strengthen the Andean Digital Agenda, promoted by the CAN Secretariat General jointly with the governments of the CAN countries and boost efforts towards deeper regional integration.
In fact this roaming agreement is just one in a number of achievements by the regional bloc that also include the establishment of temporary and permanent residence in all CAN countries, a bylaw facilitating the circulation of vehicles for private use of tourists in the four countries, and efforts towards implementing a modern technological platform to allow the sharing of environmental information.
